Story: Are you in or out?

You first heard the expression "in character" from an actor, a curt reminder that she was not herself but rather an individual in a drama, waiting to go on. Being "out of character" yourself, meaning you were singularly you, you were at that moment a distraction, an anomaly, someone out of the range of the "character's" experience.

Since that time, you've heard the expression on numerous occasions, including your own use of the expression when you were acting in various dinner theater performances or when encountering in ambiguous situations an acquaintance you knew and having to ask, "Are you in character?" by which was understood to mean "Are you approachable as you?" This entire approach to behavior would have saved you a good deal of ambiguity and confusion when you were in your dating years, but that is another matter.

Only yesterday, during lunch with Conrad, he used a variation on that theme, related to writing, when he recalled a moment when, serving as secretary to Sinclair Lewis, he'd encountered his boss in the kitchen of Lewis' home, raiding the ice box, only to be warned off with a brisk "Don't talk to me, I'm in book."

In book. In story. Two excellent concepts to writing rarely encountered in classrooms or writing books, much less in magazines or blog posts. You spend so much time learning such bare-bones concepts as story and conflict and plot, but rarely do you hear of the need to be in story or in book, living it, somehow "there" in the midst of it.

More often than not, you edge into the ocean although you do jump or plop, sometimes even dive into the swimming pool. You need to find ways to enter the story at hand, to be it and have it be you, subject and object becoming one. You were--both fortunately and unfortunately--in story this afternoon at Peet's, trying to expand some notes. You did not hear the agreeable young woman at the next table warning you that some peripatetic infant from a few tables over was about to dip your Android phone into your medium nonfat latte nor that said peripatetic infant had already made off with your bear claw. It is truly good to attempt to get reading and/or writing done in public places as a kind of psychological coach of concentration, blocking out ambient noise, music if it is any good, conversations. Such concentration gets you "in" and the story revolves about and through you.

It is worth practicing. One approach is to be in character, assuming whichever character personality attaches itself to you, then talking without thinking about it to another character, pressing the thrust of your agenda, perhaps even picking an argument. Then you are in the respondent, then you are all of them; you are gloriously in story, responding in that emotional landscape that stitches the parts together. This condition is yet another reason for the writer to take to heart the serious study and rehearsal of the actor. There is a timelessness and focus about being in, reminding you of the times as a youngster when you went about, using a magnifying lens prize from a box of Cracker-Jacks to focus the rays of the sun to burn holes in newspapers, leaves, and yes, it even worked on banana peels and chunks of wood. You have the equivalent of that magnifying glass prize whenever you reach into the Cracker-Jacks box of story. It is a prize that focuses your energy and vision into true, fiery dramatic presence.

So Predictable

predictable--a narrative condition in which the reader correctly guess the intent of a character and the outcome of that intent; dramatic circumstances in which there is little or no nuance, where the reader is neither surprised nor challenged.

If a reader is truly caught up in a story, he will have taken sides, begun to root for the success of some and the failure or worse (humiliation) for others, indulged in the trope of reader as matchmaker, seeing potential romantic entanglements. Additionally, the reader will be able to take cues from the text much as a dog about to be taken for a walk will take cues from the master putting on a jacket, clanking house keys, or reaching for a leash. Certain situations in story provoke the speculation that something--a disaster, a reversal, a surprise--is forthcoming. The shrewd writer, which is to say the writer who understands the dynamics of story, will be aware of these anticipations, then prepare for them in a way that will provoke surprise and keep the reader off guard and guessing to the point of not being able to take time away from the reading.

Never take the reader where the reader wants to go. Readers do not wish to be left standing still, which they may easily feel themselves to be if they are presented with laundry lists of details, forced to listen to long, philosophical discussions, subjected to weather reports or travel-writing descriptions of scenery. At the extreme least, readers want to feel as though they were eavesdropping on some form of intimacy; better still they wish to feel compellingly caught up with the execution of a particular character's agenda.

It is the task of the writer to make the reader feel the intensity of the characters and their involvements with the issues of the story. Anything else is predictable.

Even if you are not a fan or fancier of the suspense-based thriller, it is worth critically reading at least one novel by Harlan Coben, comparing it will one by Lee Child and Nelson Demille. Couldn't hurt to read Annie Proulx's The Shipping News, which presents yet other variations on the theme of surprise and unpredictability, then consider Louise Erdrich's A Plague of Doves.

Dealing with predictability in story provides another set of reasons to consider and absorb acting techniques from the likes of such actor coaches as Stella Adler, Sanford Meizner, and Uta Hagen, wherein actors learn where to find within themselves the emotions, gestures, and visions of surprise. In this sense, surprise is the discovery the character makes about himself/herself in times of weal and woe--discovery that before our eyes transforms the predictable into the truly remarkable.

The Unseen in the Scene, or Once More with Feeling

The main reason for an editor sending the writer back to revisit a scene in a story or novel has more to do with what has been left unsaid than what has actually been said. The scene in question--to use a baseball metaphor--touches all the bases, touches them in the proper order. Nevertheless, something seems missing the scene reads flat or, worse, reads as though it were some TV Guide two-sentence description. A moody Danish prince sets out to avenge his father's murder and his mother's remarrying the murderer. High concept, low interest. To continue the metaphor, the runner touches home plate, scores. But the score does not change the dynamic or outcome of the game. Ho hum.

Our goal is simplicity defined: No more boring scenes.

The way to make this revision come flying off the page is to give the characters an edge that relates first and foremost to the writer's feelings, which are now followed through, played out in the author's imagination, then set forth on the screen or down on the note pad. By now the writer will know the characters well enough to be able to identify with them. By now the writer will also know quite well the personal feelings resident in the story. Time now to make a dance card, a list of how each character feels about each of the others, a list that could lead to an unanticipated confrontation between two characters not scheduled to be on stage together.

It may be the writer's intention, as an example, that John and Mary intend to marry, but being each involved in an art or profession, marriage is not the priority their art or profession is. At the moment, the glue holding them together beyond the friendship and attraction and, of course, lust, is the glue of comfort. Okay, along comes the writer now to light a fire under that comfort. Let's even stipulate that John and Mary would eventually marry and be even more comfortable together, but for whatever reason the writer devises, one of the two feels constrained to make an issue of getting married, perhaps out of some fear or losing the other. Immediately another emotion is introduced, causing the kettle of comfort to boil over. John, for example, resents having to propose marriage now. His resentment shows in his behavior, leading Mary to think for example, that she is losing John. Suddenly a circumstance (marriage) which is of itself complex, becomes exponentially more complex, imparting a kind of psychological density and authenticity to a fairly common situation. The emphasis shifts from the relative ordinariness of the story into the mounting irony and complexity of the situation, which reminds the readers of the complexity of life, which leads the reader to a deeper sense of the reality of the characters.

It is not the complexity of the plot or indeed even of the conflict between the characters; it is the complexity of the characters and their own backstories, influencing their behavior.

Another way to look at the equation: action is required and recognized, which in turn produces emotion, which in its turn provokes or drives the characters to further action.

How, you ask, do I begin? Make a list of all the characters. Starting with the major characters, compile a list of how each feels about all the others, right down to the guys who deliver the pizza or Chinese takeout. Then start down at the very bottom, with the guys who deliver the pizza or Kung Pao Chicken, the maids who clean the rooms at the motels. You are holding now a template for irony, resentment, misunderstanding, and conflicting agendas, not to mention hidden agendas.

When characters are driven by their feelings (which are extensions of your feelings about the situations and circumstances), their clashes can be splendid and even their apparent agreements are seasoned with the spice of tension.